Review: Opera 9.2 - free open-source web browser
E-Luddites rejoice! You too can have Explorer 7's tabbed browsing, recover closed tabs, download BitTorrents and subscribe to RSS feeds all without upgrading to Windows XP - let alone Windows Vista. Opera 9.2 has all this and more and not only works in 98SE but even in 95.
Opera even has a similar feature to MSIE's Quick Tabs - it calls it Speed Dial. You can have thumbnails of your nine most frequently visited sites on one screen. Close a tab by mistake? Click on the little waste bin and any tabs that you have closed are available to reopen. I find newsfeed readers quickly get clogged up, especially if I forget to run them - or even if I am away from my desktop for a while. But Opera is ideal for RSS fees that only deliver items once a week, such as radio show podcasts. And to be able to download a Bit Torrent (now why on earth would I want to do that?) without opening yet another programme is truly nifty.
Because it is open source there are all kinds of developers working on extras - it calls them Widgets - that add to your browsing experience. And they're all free. The main categories are Web Developer, Fun and Games, Time and Date, Radio and Music, and News, which gives you some idea of the type of add-ons they produce. I have running on mine a very useful scientific calculator, a to-do list and a world clock.
Opera - music to my browsing senses. Bytes Rebooted score: 9/10
Opera even has a similar feature to MSIE's Quick Tabs - it calls it Speed Dial. You can have thumbnails of your nine most frequently visited sites on one screen. Close a tab by mistake? Click on the little waste bin and any tabs that you have closed are available to reopen. I find newsfeed readers quickly get clogged up, especially if I forget to run them - or even if I am away from my desktop for a while. But Opera is ideal for RSS fees that only deliver items once a week, such as radio show podcasts. And to be able to download a Bit Torrent (now why on earth would I want to do that?) without opening yet another programme is truly nifty.
Because it is open source there are all kinds of developers working on extras - it calls them Widgets - that add to your browsing experience. And they're all free. The main categories are Web Developer, Fun and Games, Time and Date, Radio and Music, and News, which gives you some idea of the type of add-ons they produce. I have running on mine a very useful scientific calculator, a to-do list and a world clock.
Opera - music to my browsing senses. Bytes Rebooted score: 9/10
Labels: browsers
posted by Graham at 5:34 pm
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